This is the second of four articles on Delhi’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR). Read the first one here.Kolkata: When Delhi voted in February 2025, 1,56,26,736 people were registered to do so. The draft roll published on August 31, 2026 holds 97,53,577.In the span of 18 months, there are 58 lakh less names on the list. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) accounts for 47,56,722 of the reduction. Another 11,16,437 disappeared through ordinary revision in the 16 months before the enumerators started work, and this decrease has not been explained.Delhi’s roll now contains a total of 97,53,577 names. The number of people who actually turned out to vote last year was 94,88,376. Three points leap out:Three seats now hold fewer than half the voters they hadMore than half the people who were eligible to vote in the New Delhi constituency in February 2025 are no longer registered there. The seat has fallen from 1,08,788 names to 52,368, a loss of 51.9%. Tughlakabad has gone from 2,04,867 to 1,00,386, and Kasturba Nagar from 1,55,607 to 77,036. Twenty-five seats have lost 40% or more of their voter list. The median seat lost 38.2%, so half of Delhi’s 70 seats are at or beyond that.The seats with the largest percentage of voters lost coincides with areas in the city dominated by renters rather than homeowners. Losses are least in areas where homeowners dominate.The voter lists in New Delhi and R. K. Puram are 48.6% smaller than in 2025, and in Delhi Cantonment it is 48% smaller. This is the service-quarters belt, where an address lasts as long as a government or military posting. Tughlakabad, Kasturba Nagar and Okhla are at 47.7% shrinkage, and Sangam Vihar is at 44.4%. These areas are dominated by people living in rented rooms in unauthorised colonies. The lightest losses sit in Matia Mahal at 23.4%, Seelampur at 23.6% and Shakur Basti at 24.8%, all old, dense and owner-occupied neighbourhoods. Two points should be noted here. These percentages are based on the 2025 roll, so they carry the 11.16 lakh lost to ordinary revision as well as SIR. In 68 of 70 seats, voters removed exceed the 2025 marginIn 68 of Delhi’s 70 constituencies, the number of names removed after the SIR exceeds the margin that decided the 2025 result. The median seat lost five times its winning margin. Seventeen seats lost more than ten times it, seven more than 25 times, and four more than 50 times.ConstituencyWon by2025 marginRemovedRemoved as multiple of marginSangam ViharBJP34478,430228Trilokpuri (SC)BJP39263,582162JangpuraBJP67560,32689TimarpurBJP1,16866,38957MehrauliBJP1,78285,15648Rajinder NagarBJP1,23153,85944Malviya NagarBJP2,13157,28127KalkajiAAP3,52177,46122Patel Nagar (SC)AAP4,04980,34620Greater KailashBJP3,18862,09519Incidentally, all seven seats that lost more than 25 times their margin are held by the BJP. Homeowners at an advantageOwner-dominant constituencies held 45.4% of Delhi’s roll before the revision and hold 48.4% now. Renter-dominant seats fell from 28.5% to 25.8%. The surviving electorate is more settled, and the BJP polls 48.1% on that terrain against 41% on the other.What the exercise sorted Delhi by was whether people stay put. Renter-dominant areas lost 40.3% of their rolls against 27.4% where people own. This gap holds at every income level, in every one of the four seats traced street by street, and among men far more than among women.The revision was meant to keep ineligible people off the rolls. Death and double registration account for 8.9% of what it actually removed. The rest rests on an officer not finding somebody at home over three visits, in a city where roughly a third of voters rent or move on.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.